


The Fall

by modok64



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Characters Play Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons & Dragons References, Fantasy, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28933692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modok64/pseuds/modok64
Summary: Around November 2018, after 3 years of stop, I began a new D&D Campaign with a bunch of friends here in London.At the end of the first year, one of them told me "This story is cool, why don't you write it down?"A couple of years later, here I am.This is a narration of our sessions, what happened, how it happened.If you are familiar with roleplaying games you know that they are very much unpredictable in their outcome and our game is no exception.The level of violence you can expect is the same of an average Fantasy novel;there are fights and death, but I intentionally don't indulge in any gory description.The Lore in this story is original, something that I had in mind for a while now.The ruleset we use is D&D 5E.The Campaign is happily still ongoing and "The Fall" collates the first year.This is a work in progress, but I have enough material now to publish roughly every other week.Thanks for reading, any comment/feedback is very welcome.If you are interested in my maps, I publish them on my Instagram account:https://www.instagram.com/modok64/
Kudos: 5





	1. Prologue - Part I

The wagon train was heading north at a plodding pace, going through the lower canyon, when the third wagon broke one of the wheels. It was nothing unusual in that passage, but that small incident was enough for Bemmaer to take all the possible precautions.

Bemmaer was an experienced scout. Even blindfolded, he could lead a wagon from the high city of Windbay to the lower district of Duskvalley, and he knew the current route from Crystalford to the Barren Fields as well as the lines on his hand. But Bemmaer was also a nervous man.

So the wagon train headed north at a plodding pace.

Airin Stormheart laid at the bottom of one of the wagons, a blade of grass between her lips and the nape resting on her hands, fingers entwined and elbows open on the sides. The long red hair spread over her arms, a light breeze moving it; it tickled the skin left uncovered by the light armour, but the green eyes didn’t move from the idle contemplation of the sky above her.   
One foot, covered by a comfortable travel boot and resting sideways on the other bent knee, rocked to the rhythm of a melody known only to her.

If some casual observer were to spot her like this, they would probably bet she wasn’t a very good guard, too relaxed and distracted to pay attention to any danger.  
Of course, if they knew how much anyone who wanted her service had to pay for it, they would probably reconsider their first opinion.

“Everything seems fine at the moment,” a deep voice said from her left side, underlined by the rhythmic step of a walking horse.

Airin hummed, without turning her head or stopping her foot. “A couple of miles ago someone was lurking from the woods on the right, but whatever their intentions, they moved away,” she said.

“Wise,” the other voice replied.

Airin moved her eyes towards the left, taking in the other mercenary’s strong figure, a man called Zoltan Jaeger. He was imposing, tall and with a broad frame. His hair was dark and long, left free on his shoulders. An armour covered his body, a fearsome sword peeked out from behind his back, and a second one smaller was on his right hip. It was impossible to mistake him for anything but a warrior, a dangerous one.  
  
“Do I have to stand up?” Airin asked, moving the blade of grass from one side of her mouth to the other. “Where are the others?”  
  
“No need to,” Zoltan replied, keeping his gaze in front of him and only occasionally diverting it on the trees around them. “The ranger is walking close to the other wagon, and the cleric is sitting on it. Everyone else is where they should be.”  
  
Airin hummed once again, barely protruding her lower lip, thoughtful. “I’m still wondering...”  
  
Zoltan shot her a sidelong glance. “Why the cleric?” He suggested.  
  
“Why the cleric?” Airin confirmed, without adding anything else.

It wasn’t the first time Airin and Zoltan travelled together. They were approaching two years since the first time they met during a mission, and they had started travelling and working together since. It wasn’t compulsory for someone to hire both of them. Still, usually, the simple fact of having two experienced mercenaries used to fight together was a plus very few people were keen to throw away.  
And neither Airin nor Zoltan had ever seen anyone hire a cleric for a mission whose goal was to recover ancient artefacts from a long time lost city.  
Rumours said that somewhere in the Barren Fields, a city once stood. To be honest, nobody even knew if it still existed.

The Barren Fields were an area in the far north of the realm of Leddarhia.  
They were accessible only through a nameless canyon in the Doma district, which people referred to only as 'The Passage'.  
The whole area was a natural depression of the terrain miles long and with few resources.  
Despite its name, the landscape was unusual and uneven, full of crevasses, unidentifiable ruins, petrified forests and dead swamps.

According to the Believers, the place degenerated in the aftermath of The Happening and no willing creature, high or low, ever settled there since.  
Over time, hordes of scavengers tried to explore and plunder the area. Many came back empty-handed, and with nothing interesting to tell about the desolate land. Many others though, inexplicably, didn't come back at all.

Airin spitted away the blade of grass with a sigh and rose to a sitting position, crossing her legs. She turned partially to look in the direction the wagon train was heading to. In the distance, the pathway abruptly broke as if cut by a knife.

“We’re approaching The Passage,” Zoltan said, his eyes narrowing slightly. 

A grimace twisted the woman's mouth. “Let’s hope our guide knows where to go after that. I have no interest in getting lost in the Barren Fields.”

  
  


* * *

The wagons were travelling in the Barren Fields for three days, Bemmaer confidently adjusting the direction from time to time after checking some documents he always kept close to him. The papers were probably some sort of map, and the man was constantly checking on them, both when travelling or at night around the fire. When someone inquired about the origin and the content of those documents, the answer was they had been given to him by their employer; he always kept that conversation short and never showed its content to anybody.  
  
Discreetly, from atop of a tree or patrolling around the campfire, a curious pair of sharp, piercing-blue, eyes kept capturing out of those documents as much detail as they could. 

One afternoon, Airin was walking on the left side of the wagon train keeping some distance, her two-handed sword hanging across her back, swinging slightly at every step when the ranger approached her. The mercenary glanced towards the other woman raising an eyebrow, inquiring.

Jade was a very young woman with childish features. Curly red hair fell down her back, gathered in a three-strand braid. Freckles dotted her skin, and her piercing blue eyes looked at everything around her with curiosity and care.

She was clearly the youngest in the group, probably not even in her twenties.

“Isn’t it too quiet here? I was expecting something… different,” the ranger said, furrowing her brows while one hand played with a lock of hair.

Airin suppressed an amused smile, glancing around. The landscape was depressing, miles and miles of flat ground in every direction. A sheer layer of dust particles swimming in the air constantly blurred the line of sight. It wasn’t thick like fog, but it could deceive just the same. Whoever ventured in that land had to watch their steps, as even the largest crevasses or the tallest petrified tree weren’t visible until you were close enough to make up their silhouette. Even the sky looked dimmer.

“I guess we’re lucky. As far as I know, the only people who came back from this place did so because it was quiet, bordering on boring,” the mercenary said, rolling her shoulders and bending her neck from side to side to stretch the stiff muscles.

The ranger took another moment to consider their surroundings and Airin took advantage of the pause to appraise her travel companion. There was something that was bothering the mercenary. Jade was undoubtedly a talented ranger despite her young age; that had been clear from the very beginning by how she moved her slender figure around, careful and silent. But the way she carried herself, or she sat around the fire, back straight and chin slightly turned up, revealed a higher education, something instilled forcibly with years and years of practice. Despite her present, Jade clearly didn't grow up in a slum. 

Airin narrowed her eyes briefly: if the ranger wasn't a commoner, she was doing her best to hide it. It was worth keeping it in mind, just in case. After all, it could mean troubles.

“And those who didn’t come back?” Jade inquired after a moment, bringing her piercing blue eyes back to the mercenary, whose face had already turned around in a carefully crafted neutral expression.

Airin’s lips bent up into a sharp smirk.

“I guess they had too much fun instead.”

* * *

It turned out the guide indeed had a pretty good idea of where to go, even if things didn’t go precisely in the way everyone had imagined.

The fifth day in the Barren Fields was coming to an end, the sun setting down and the shadows stretching from the uneven spots on the ground. The wagon train stopped where it was; there was no use in searching for a particular site, given there was nothing around that stood up as better or safer.

The guards started calling each other, beginning the well-proven routine of preparing the camp for the night. The wagons were soon put in a semi-arch. Wood carried from the last city they have visited, thrown in a pile in the centre ready to be lit.

Zoltan briefly considered the number of resources left and how many days it would last, before walking outside the semi-arch to start his patrol. Not that it had been needed on previous nights, but habits were hard to fight. 

The man’s dark eyes scanned everything on sight, knowing the now dim light would disappear shortly, leaving the camp’s fire as the only source of light for miles.  
Anywhere else, it would mean troubles. In this place, it meant more uncertainty.

Zoltan was a man of action. It was what he wanted, to deal with troubles; what he was hired for. But so far, the whole journey had been unsettlingly quiet, even more since they started venturing in the Barren Fields.

It wasn’t that Zoltan was complaining, even if he liked when there was something for him to do. No, what was unnerving him was that they were in a place which everyone knew was dangerous but only randomly; it could leave people unscathed altogether or take them from the world without a word. And you couldn’t tell which way it was going to break for you until- well until _something_ happened.

If one or two people had come back from here with a wound, a story, it could be different. But like this-

A soft sound of steps behind him took Zoltan out of his reverie, and the man turned his head to see who was coming. It was more a shadow than a figure, but the long vest exposed their identity quickly.

“Father, the fire is undoubtedly on its way to become pleasant. Wouldn’t it better for you to rest close to it?” Zoltan asked, turning again to look into the now impenetrable darkness surrounding them.

“You must think I am one of those priests who devote their lives to sitting and filling out papers and making as little effort as possible in the day to day routine,” the rich voice of the other man answered.

Zoltan glanced sideways when the tall man stopped next to him and shifted his weight on the other foot.

“My apologies, Father. I didn’t mean to offend,” the mercenary said, just the faintest trace of embarrassment in his voice.  
In the dim light of the fire behind them, the cleric raised one hand and shook it briefly mid-air, as to chase away an insect, a smile tugging his lips.

“No offence was taken.” 

A stretch of time spent in silence followed, with each of them lost in their thoughts, before Zoltan spoke again.

“I must then infer that you are more like a road priest, a traveller.” Nothing came to correct the assumption, so he just went on. “But this mission doesn’t seem an area of interest for your kind. We are a bunch of well-dressed plunderers after all” 

Zoltan didn’t say anything else, but the question was hanging clear between them. They were distant enough to be reached only from the outermost circle of light, and it was difficult to make out anything from the other man’s face.

“I came on this journey because I specifically requested to do so. I’m on a mission on behalf of my Order.” 

The soft, calm voice of the priest seemed to appear out of nowhere, soothing. He surely was not a man of many words, Zoltan thought, side-eyeing his interlocutor.

Raphael was a tall man, with short black hair and a hint of a beard. He was in good shape but wasn't young, and a few grey hairs suggested he was in his late forties. A long winter cape white and blue draped clothes in similar colours. As a protection, he wore over his vest metal plaques, positioned on his chest and forearms.  
Around his neck was visible a pendant, the symbol of Sorus, Supreme Sorcerer of Life.

Zoltan nodded briefly after the answer, knowing very well it was unlikely Raphael would add anything else. The Order kept his affairs secret to the people who didn't belong to it.

“Come now,” Raphael said, one hand landing gently on Zoltan’s shoulder. “There’s no reason to stay here. Whatever has to happen, will happen anyway.”

Zoltan suppressed a shiver of premonition and, after looking one last time into the darkness, he turned to follow Raphael back to the firecamp.

* * *

The majority of the people were already asleep in their sleeping bags, and the last ones awake were finishing their drink, ready to follow. Airin and Zoltan were briefly discussing guard duties, while Jade was stretching her legs and Raphael was reading something in the light of the fire.

There was no warning.

A deafening sound, as if something very close had collapsed, hit the camp; the rumble startled everyone, heads shooting up and hands scrambling for weapons.

Then darkness surrounded everything. 


	2. Prologue - Part II

Jade groaned when a stab of pain went through her head, instantly making her stomach turn in an unpleasant way. She fought the sickness by breathing slowly and steadily, turning her body carefully so that she could lay on her back. She raised an arm, putting it on her eyes, feeling dust and gravel falling from her skin in the movement. 

The action had been instinctive as if she had to shield her closed eyes from the light, but it didn’t take long for the ranger to realise there wasn’t light in the first place. Beyond the eyelids, everything was dark.

It wasn’t shocking; it was nighttime after all when-  
  
_What exactly did happen?  
  
_Dropping her arm carefully at her side, hand resting on her stomach, Jade took a few more moments to check the rest of her body, moving all four limbs first to be sure they were fine. She felt sore, and she was sure there were bruises everywhere, but there were no significant wounds.  
  
Her head was another thing entirely. It was throbbing painfully, and the ranger had to keep breathing at a slow pace for minutes before the pain subdued enough not to cause her sickness. Only then, Jade opened her eyes slowly. She had to blink many times before the sight above her became clear enough.

It didn’t make any sense, though.  
  
There was some sort of dim light coming from above, enough light to catch a glimpse of a ceiling made of rocks far in the distance. It could easily be a hundred yards above.  
  
Jade screwed her eyes close again, waited two long breaths and reopened them: nothing had changed.

The young woman was still trying to make any sense of the sight when a close exclamation of pain caught her attention. She turned her head slowly on the right and took in the figure of Raphael, barely moving as if he was just regaining some consciousness.

“Father-”

It came out like a grating sound, so Jade licked her lips and tried to clear her dry throat.

“Father, are you all right?”

It took an indefinite amount of time for an answer to come back, after more efforts from the man to gain a more comfortable position, laying on his back and breathing heavily.

“I- think so?”

The voice sounded suffering, but he talked without screaming in pain, so Jade took it as good news. Raphael moved his arms and pushed on the ground. He was trying to sit up when a familiar voice came through from somewhere atop.

"I've found someone,” the voice shouted, talking to someone else.

Raphael blinked twice trying to focus the person up there. His body wasn't responding well yet, but he could hear Jade crawling close to him.

"They seem alive," the voice went again.

Raphael instinctively grabbed his holy symbol and rose it, partly as a natural defence, and partly in case it would help to be recognised.

"Father?- Is that you?"

* * *

Zoltan looked down the roof, finding only darkness in the close distance. 

He tried to recollect some memories while rotating his left shoulder, checking if it was still dislocated. Nothing around him looked familiar.  
  
He was clearly on the flat roof of a building in some sort of underground.  
Beams of light came from above, from a far distance; where he stood, the light was dim, but enough to shape the surroundings a bit.

It seemed they had fallen in a- giant cave?

Or at least this was what Airin had said after checking on the opposite side of the same roof.

They both had perked up at the same time, like well-trained boxers, and after a minimal tending to their injuries, they had started looking around searching for clues or people still alive.

"It doesn't have any sense," Zoltan said softly, squinting to capture more details. "How huge can be a cave to contain-" The man struggled to find the right definition for the place that was unfolding to his eyes.

"A citadel?" Airin proposed, looking down from her side of the roof. The wall of the building went down until it was possible to see. Even looking in the distance, no light beam lightened the perimeter of the underground. The whole area appeared infinite in length and width and was so deep that the entire structure seemed to float on an abyss of darkness.

Airin swallowed, dipping her gaze into that nothingness.

Both Zoltan and Airin were slowly getting used to the lighting. In the distance, where some light beams hit directly, they could begin to identify other buildings: the whole structure looked indeed like a fortified citadel, and they had fallen at one edge of its perimeter.

"We need to find the others, we cannot risk making our way in this place by ourselves," Zoltan's voice was now tense. He shut out the unpleasant thought that the rest of the expedition could have fallen in the void. 

No entrance was visible, but he noticed a terrace ten feet below: another storey of the building perhaps.

It seemed somebody was there and they were moving, faintly.

"I've found someone", Zoltan shouted more loudly than he wanted to, while Airin was still staring at the enormity of the cave. The man’s hand went to his sword while he was trying to identify the people down there. "They seem alive," he said, looking briefly at Airin to be sure she was alright. 

The other mercenary wasn't moving, still staring at the chasm. 

Murmuring some curses under his breath, Zoltan squinted to make out anything that could help him identify the moving figures. One of the persons rose what looked like a holy symbol.

"Father?" Zoltan turned again on the people down below "Is that you?"

Airin blinked twice into the darkness, then she released a sigh and moved toward Zoltan. 

"I guess we are going to have too much fun,” she muttered, recalling her conversation with Jade just a few hours before.

* * *

By the time Zoltan and Airin managed to reach Jade and Raphael, the ranger and the cleric had finally been able to stand up. Bruises, cuts and dust covered their bodies, but no significant damage seemed to have occurred. Which was impressive, considering the height they all had fallen from.

There was an oppressive silence all around them, which seemed to be amplified by the darkness. After updating the ranger and the cleric about what he and Airin had seen from the top of the roof, Zoltan fell silent for a moment.

“We can’t hear any voice nor see any other person. We can’t exclude we might be the only ones alive,” he said with a grave voice. His companions nodded.

“Maybe,” Airin added after only a second, her gaze pointed towards a part of the terrace they were standing on, eyes narrowed. 

She moved a few steps on the right, easily avoiding rubble collapsed from above, and crouched close to some dark stains that were painting the surface of the terrace. In the dim light of the place, they were barely visible, but the woman had spent enough time on the job to notice small details even in probing conditions. She reached out a hand, fingers dipping in the dark spot, coming back stained. She rubbed the fingers together in slow, pensive motions, gaze leaving the hand to follow a trail only she seemed able to see.

“It’s fresh enough. Someone was bleeding. And,” Airin said, face still turned towards something that Zoltan, Jade and Raphael couldn’t see yet, “there are only two possibilities here. Someone who was with us is still alive and went away on their legs, or-”

She didn’t finish the sentence, implications obvious: if there was blood but no bodies, then the other option was that someone else - someone who was already in this place - dragged away whoever was there, dead or alive.

Airin stood up slowly, cleaning her fingers from the blood by brushing them carelessly on her trousers.

“Why didn’t they wake us up? Or took us as well?” Raphael asked, moving along with Zoltan and Jade to go closer to Airin.

“That’s an excellent question, Father,” Airin answered, turning to look at her companions over her shoulder. “I think that if we want an answer, we need to look for it ourselves.”

Zoltan raised his eyes to look in the direction Airin was staring a few moments ago, understanding dawning on his face. Without a word, he pointed a finger towards a wall not distant from where they were standing, in which a door was now clearly visible for everyone.

“I wonder if the inside will be better or worse than the outside,” Zoltan murmured, moving in that direction.

The closed-door was leading inside the building, and the traces of blood stopped in front of it. Once Zoltan had reached it, he started examining the wooden surface with his hands.

“It’s surprisingly in excellent conditions. The wood is solid. It almost looks like a fortified door. Maybe this building was important for some reason.” Zoltan tried the handle and found it moving smoothly. He exchanged a glance with Airin. “It’s open.”

Instinctively, all four of them bent back their heads, and eyes pointed towards that barely noticeable hole in the ceiling of the enormous cavern. After a moment, they looked at each other.

  
“I don’t know how much safer is inside, but I feel quite exposed out here,” Jade announced, taking in the affirmative nodding of the others. "Also,” she added, pointing a finger in the distance and making everyone turn around to follow the direction, "I think that’s the main bridge that connects a citadel to- well, normally to the commercial roads," she shrugged.

The group squinted to identify what Jade was pointing at. 

It was difficult to see down there, even a few feet ahead, depending on how the dim light bounced on the different surfaces. 

Here and there, light beams coming into the underground from above lit up the surroundings of very distant buildings giving a general idea of the place's enormity, but not giving a clear and coherent view of what was contained.

"In this case, that would be a good starting point for us,” Raphael chimed in finally identifying the bridge far distant. "Let's try to reach that landmark; we can re-evaluate our options along the way if something comes up."

Zoltan looked briefly at his companions. “Let's go in then. I’ll go first, and Airin will close the line. Stay alert. We don’t know where we are and what we could find.”

The mercenary waited for another collective nod, before grabbing the handle of the door and pulling it carefully.

* * *

The place stank.

There was a smell of old, rotten wood and rusty metal coming from inside, so strong it was masking the cave’s natural scent.   
Once the four survivors crossed the threshold, they were in a room pitch black. Outside, the dim light could barely let them see a few feet ahead, inside there was no light at all. Zoltan lit a torch to search what resulted as an empty room. There were rubbles everywhere, smashed pieces of furniture, rusty tools on the ground. The only two windows were bricked up. 

The blood tracks led to an open door, the only way out of the room.

The sound of broken wood and glass accompanied every step; even Jade, with her light feet, struggled to move forward in silence. On the other side of the door, a narrow spiral staircase made of stone led down, the blood following that path. 

Keeping their senses sharp, the four started descending the stairs.

Halfway down, they found Bemmaer’s body; the traces of blood stopped there.

Zoltan was leading the line and was the first to see him. He stayed in silence for a few seconds, then he passed the torch back to Jade and with Raphael's help carried down the body. Once at the bottom they found themselves in a room, the two men dropped him as gently as possible on the floor, so that Raphael could check the wounds.

He found no traces of struggle: Bemmaer had died because of the bleeding and numerous internal wounds, undoubtedly caused by the fall into the underground.

"He was confused and in pain. I doubt he knew what he was doing. That's why he didn't even notice us or ask for help," Raphael explained. Then he whispered a blessing, pouring some water on Baemmar’s forehead.

Zoltan approached the dead man’s backpack, opening it to search for anything that could help. There was broken glass inside, and everything was soaking wet. The liquid smelled like a mix of oil and other chemical compounds he wasn't able to identify.

"Nothing useful here," he said, taking out the maps and documents that the man carried everywhere with him. They were completely wet and ruined, impossible to read. There was nothing else in the backpack apart for some tools they didn't need.

Jade looked at the papers with disappointment.

"He was a good man," Jade said, standing next to the body in prayer position.

"Did you know him very well?" Airin asked, imitating the young woman's stance out of respect. 

Jade shook her head. "No, not at all. I barely spoke to him." 

After a moment of silence, the ranger saluted him and prepared to leave the room. Airin didn't know what to say, a confused expression on her face. She looked at Zoltan, and the man just smiled back and shrugged.

"It is part of a prayer. It is used mainly by the worshippers of Anika, Supreme Sorceress of the Sun," Raphael whispered back to them, noticing their confusion.

Jade was waiting in front of the only door in the room. 

"Shall we?"

The group pressed on and door after door they made their way into an abandoned place. Their pace was slow, looking for any type of danger, creatures or traps alike.

They reached the exit of the building and stepped out at the street level.

The citadel was silent and massive from down there, and they moved through the streets trying to find the way to the bridge.

After one hour, the four companions realised that exploring the area wasn't dangerous at all; it was, however, definitely strange and frustrating. Jade was pretty sure they were in the so-called 'Castle', the part of a citadel where the Lords were used to live. It was expected for the area to be fortified for protection, but what they found bothered her.

Strong and elaborate barricades blocked many roads; some buildings were connected by walkways that clearly weren't part of the original design, and some entrances were sealed, while new ones had been created.

For whatever reason, someone in the past had ordered to transform the place in a sort of gigantic maze. But why and when it was impossible to say.

The main issue though, was that at the street level no natural light was present. Probably too far from the top of the cavern or maybe because of the buildings, but the result was that torches were needed all the time.

"Could it be they changed the 'Castle' after it collapsed in this place? Maybe they wanted to strengthen it? After all, it probably suffered catastrophic damages in the aftermath of the impact," Airin suggested. 

Not that she was interested in finding an explanation, but she wanted to indulge in some conversation to break the silence and the tension. It wasn’t new for her to indulge in small talk before a battle in the field or in the Arena, but nobody weighed in, and Airin relented, shrugging.

Jade kept looking out for clues, openings and possible dangers. The ranger moved back and forth, up and down, climbing on a barricade or checking on an occasional alley that opened on the path they were following.

"Whatever the danger was," Raphael hinted, raising a finger to point up, the same direction he was looking at, "apparently it could come from above as well."

The whole group lifted their gazes to follow.

Every part of the Castle usually exposed to the outside, like streets or squares, presented a built-up wooden ceiling ten to fifteen feet above the ground; the buildings were used to hold up this construction. In the absence of any ambient light that detail had almost gone unnoticed, but now that Raphael had pointed it out it was clear that the district was covered entirely, not a single place reachable from the outside.

Zoltan sighed. He’d hated every single moment of that exploration so far, and the situation didn’t seem bound to change anytime soon. The more details were noticed by him or pointed out by someone else, the more he hated it. The place was freakingly odd, and the absence of any evident danger was driving the mercenary crazy. Zoltan hoped something would come out of a building and charge them.

Anything was better than the current situation.

"Are we getting closer to that bridge?" He asked monotone.

All the heads turned to Jade, who jumped off another small barricade. 

"Hard to say," she replied calmly, wiping her hands. "Orienteering is not easy here, but I'd say," the ranger looked around, "no, I don’t think so. We haven't made it to the Higher City yet. Because of the barricades, we are taking many detours. Given that someone put a great effort into further fortifying this place, I don't want to step on any trap built to kill...," she thought for a few seconds, as for searching for the right words, "whatever they built all of these things for.” Jade looked at Zoltan. "So be prepared for a slooooow, looooong walk". She put a big smile on her face and went back to patrol the area.

Zoltan sighed again. If Jade was correct, then they had a very long way to go. Assuming the citadel plan was a standard one, the bridge was likely located in the Lower City.

"How old do you think this place could be? The style seems ancient," Airin said, trying again with the small talk now that a conversation had started. "Could it date back to before The Happening?" And suddenly a thought hit Airin, making her stop abruptly. 

"Could it be that this is the 'city' we were hired to find and pillage?" 

Raphael and Zoltan stopped at that thought while Jade continued to press on checking a turn fifty feet ahead.

"As far as I'm concerned," Zoltan said, keeping an eye on Jade that was going in the distance, "my contract is void. Happy to return the money I took in advance." 

Another moment of silence followed; everyone was turned into their own mind, pondering the situation. Then a sudden thought hit Zoltan, and he turned at Raphael. 

"Are we in the place you wanted to be? Is this place the reason you joined the expedition?"

Both Airin and Zoltan looked at the cleric now, the woman slightly confused by the question. Zoltan didn't think the man was responsible for anything that had happened so far, but if he’d got it right, this could make a difference.

Raphael looked away from a very tall building, down to the two warriors. He noticed that the mood was somehow changed again and smiled faintly. But before he could reply, Jade's voice came from the distance.

"Hey, folks!" Her voice was enthusiastic while her arm was waving to the group to reach over. "I think I know where we are." 


	3. Prologue - Part III

The group was walking on a large street; huge smooth stones once paved the road, but now some were missing, others askew.  
On their left, an impressive three-storey building stretched along the road until a large square.   
Jade was walking slightly in front of the others, her steps light.

“The throne room, you said?” Raphael asked, keeping an eye on their surroundings.

She nodded without turning her head.

“Indeed. It’s quite impossible to mistake it. The Palace is beautiful, its decoration still visible, the double door is massive, although broken open.”

When they reached the place, it became immediately evident that Jade was right. That part of the building was higher than the rest, decorated, and with dusty windows of stained glass-lined on the wall’s top section. Even after years of neglect, it still looked magnificent.

The citadel ended there; there were no other buildings beyond the Palace, only darkness and the cave’s enormity. Whatever building was there, it had been swallowed up by some collapse long ago, leaving only a black void that marked the new perimeter of the citadel.

Airin and Zoltan set out to explore the area in opposite directions, keeping away from the chasm’s edge, while Raphael and Jade waited for them. 

On the opposite side of the Palace, forty yards on the west, the remains of a tall hedge surrounded what in the past was probably a private garden. The barrier maintained its original shape, although no flowers or leaves were present. Airin walked closer, curious: the branches looked dry, and when she tried to snap one, a high pitch sound came out as if it was made of some sort of burnished glass instead of wood. Airin took a look around. That area hadn't been fortified and, compared to the rest of the Castle; it had been abandoned long before the remodelling, exactly like the Palace.

"No ceilings..." she murmured, looking at the garden first, then back to the square and the Palace. Up above, she could stare at the eternal night of the cave. 

Airin walked along the hedge until she found an entrance where a gate once stood, allowing her to peek inside.

"Folks," she called then, raising her voice, "you should see this."

* * *

The four were staring at a vast, roundish deep hole in the ground, about a hundred feet in diameter. The terrain surrounding the area was damaged, drained. It looked like something had sucked into the ground whatever used to be there, creating a hole in the aftermath.

"A building? If yes, what kind?" Jade asked nobody in particular while cautiously moving closer.

The air smelled different the closer she got, and a gentle wind came in and out of the hole. Jade shivered: it felt like the whole cavern was breathing through that opening.

"Please, step back from there. This place freaks me out," Zoltan said, his tone of voice implying he wasn't really asking.

Raphael stepped into the conversation. "I agree, Jade. Whatever caused this, it wasn't natural. There’s still something…not quite right here."

Jade sighed, contemplating for a moment if it was worth fighting to assert her opinions. But she was tired and not in the mood for an argument. She looked at the hole once more, then shrugged and moved back where her companions were waiting.

 _'Whatever is that hole, it is not for sure a viable exit of the cave',_ she thought while leaving the place.

* * *

They all moved away from the garden, back to the Palace and right in front of its massive double door. Forcing themselves to not look at the edge and the cave’s darkness, they focused on the entrance.

Zoltan hummed, taking in the solid wood and the mechanisms of the lock. “These doors were made to be opened and closed only from the inside,” he said with a pensive tone, raising his hands to brush his fingers on the metallic parts. “A fine job. The wood is also in excellent conditions. They could still work perfectly with minor maintenance, so-”

He didn’t finish the sentence, raising his eyes once again to look at the door in its entirety when Airin spoke next, continuing the reasoning.

“So why are they open wide? Shouldn’t the throne room be the most protected part of a Palace?”

“If you still have a Lord to protect, yes,” said Raphael, stepping beyond the threshold and looking around, followed by Jade.

“True, I suppose.” Airin shrugged, tapping briefly on Zoltan’s shoulders to catch his attention and signalling him they were going inside. After another look at the door, the man followed the rest of the group.

The throne room was spacious. There was not a single piece of furniture visible, broken or intact. It had three naves, each of them separated by three massive columns; along the walls, ancient armours lined from the entrance to a dais that lied on the wall opposite the double door.  
The wall in the right nave was partially broken, an opening was present, about fifteen feet in diameter and quite irregular looking out into the empty darkness of the cave. 

In the left nave, the wall in the past had a small opening, a door probably, but now it was bricked up. It was likely a connection with the rest of the Palace in the old days, but now it was utterly useless.

Airin and Zoltan took their time to examine the armours while Raphael and Jade went towards the dais. Just before the stage, at the centre of the floor, there was a massive arcane symbol, a composition of runes and geometrical shapes, still visible despite dust layers.   
Raphael walked through some of its sections thoughtfully before getting on the stage and turning to examine it from a more elevated position.

The stage looked like one of those where thrones would usually stand, but it was devoid of furniture like the rest of the room.   
Jade passed Raphael and continued until she reached the wall at the back.

A heavy silence dominated the space for many minutes while each of them tried to put together as many details as possible.

“The style of the armours is unknown to me,” Zoltan said after a while, walking to rejoin Jade and Raphael on the dais.

“The house crest is not familiar either, it seems an owl” Airin added, mirroring Zoltan from the other side of the room.

They circled the arcane symbol on the floor, glancing briefly towards it, before getting on the stage and turning to Raphael. The Cleric allowed himself a few more minutes before he frowned, his facial expression souring.

“It is not my area of expertise, but it doesn't make too much sense to me,” Raphael said, walking closer to a section of the runes. “These recall Transmutation runes, but the ones up there,” he pointed to the opposite section, "are Conjuration runes."

He paused for a while, trying to find a better way to sum up.

"Again, not my area of expertise, but if I have to guess, it can be some sort of summoning circle. A weird one, though. It is a sort of mix up of different sources of magic."

Airin shifted from one foot to the other, her lips tightening in a thin line. Zoltan’s jaw contracted briefly, and the mercenary crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“So,” the man started, voice displeased, “we have a cavern so big that I struggle to understand how it even exists. A citadel which is safe to suppose was once above and now lies underground. The same citadel sports evident signs of heavy reinforcement. And then there’s a possible summoning circle.”

“And these,” Jade chipped in from behind them, making the other three startle briefly. Zoltan, Raphael and Airin turned to look towards her, the young ranger pointing at the wall. 

On the stony surface, there were significant black stains that faded towards the floor. They were mainly situated in the central part of the stage, and their shapes looked like people with their arms raised, as they had tried to protect themselves from something.

“That’s not- very reassuring,” Raphael said to break the heavy silence.

“It’s a way to describe it,” Jade answered in a light tone of voice. “Can we assume whatever they wanted to summon wasn’t pleased?”

More silence followed her question. After a while, Airin crawled her foot on the floor, catching small debris under the sole and producing an unpleasant scratching sound.

“Let’s finish exploring this room and leave. This area doesn’t look as reinforced as the rest of the Castle. It probably means it was abandoned long before the remodelling. Maybe we will have more luck somewhere else,” she said, feigning confidence she was far from feeling.

There was some murmured answer and nod, and they moved away from the stage, this time sticking together. There was only one spot of the throne room they had avoided so far, and they carefully moved towards it now. They checked every detail they could find on their way to the broken wall, eyeing it from a distance: the darkness on the other side was impenetrable, so thick it looked like a solid surface. 

There was nothing noteworthy between the dais and the hole, apart from a stone pedestal that reached Zoltan’s shoulder. Out of habit, Zoltan’s hand swiped on top of it and hit something movable. The mercenary released a surprised gasp that caught the attention of the rest of the group. When they turned to look at him, they watched in confusion Zoltan moving his hands in the air as if trying to grab something.

“What are you doing?” Jade asked, eyeing the mercenary in utter fascination. “Have you finally gone insane?”

Zoltan’s hand was midair now, his fingers bent but not closed in a fist as if he was holding something. The man was blinking, watching his hand with no less confusion on his face than the other three.

“There is something here. I’m not completely-,” Zoltan trailed off, his second hand coming up to touch whatever was locked in the other one. He frowned. “It seems like an ampoule?” Despite him being the only one having a real chance at understanding what was going on, it came out as a question.

Airin, Jade and Raphael gathered around the man, taking turns to touch carefully in Zoltan’s hand.

“An invisibility enchantment, maybe?” Raphael ventured, massaging his chin with his fingers.

“But why?” Zoltan asked, not expecting answers. “But most of all, what is it?”

Still holding the object carefully, Zoltan moved his fingers, following the invisible ampoule’s shape until he reached something different. “There’s a lid.”

“I would be cautious with-,” Airin started, but Zoltan had already removed the lid with a loud pop, the only tangible sign of the object being there in the first place. Airin sighed.

Zoltan made a move as if he was tilting the ampoule, putting his index’s tip in front of the opening. The man pushed out his lower lip, thoughtful. “There’s a liquid inside.”

“An invisible ampoule with some liquid inside left on a seemingly empty pedestal in a destroyed throne room of a Palace in a collapsed Citadel. What could be wrong?” Jade chirped.

Zoltan was still examining his wet finger, rubbing two fingers together to feel the texture. Airin narrowed her eyes. 

“Zoltan, don’t you dare-,” she started. 

Once again, she didn’t have time to finish her sentence.  
Something shifted on Zoltan’s face, resolution maybe, and he took his hand to his mouth, lips closing around something and head shooting back to drink the liquid in one shot.

For a moment, everyone froze in the throne room, eyes wide and trained at Zoltan, expecting him to collapse on the floor or to transform into something horrible. Minutes passed, and nothing happened, though, so Airin’s voice snarled in the silence.

“Are you out of your mind? Have you gone mad all of a sudden? In what world was this a good idea, Zoltan? Anything could have happened!” She yelled, eyes sending green lightning towards the other mercenary.

“But nothing happened,” Zoltan answered, and he sounded nearly disappointed. 

He moved to put back the lid on the ampoule, but something didn’t work quite well. Maybe the glass was slippery because of some of the liquid, or perhaps the fact that he could see neither the ampoule nor the lid: Zoltan’s hands struggled again mid-air for a second, and then a loud crash of glass shuttering resounded in the throne room.   
Raphael’s sharp intake of breath cut the stunned silence when some leftover of the liquid became visible for a moment, then disappearing like it had been absorbed by the floor.

Before anyone could move or say anything, an icy gust of air blew through the hole in the wall.

* * *

Airin and Zoltan were still arguing, increasingly loudly, when Jade lit up a torch to look outside the hole. The gust was indeed cold, but it wasn't the temperature that gave Jade the chill. Raphael murmured something, holding his holy symbol behind her, while the ranger took a deep breath and put the torch and her head through the cavity.

"I don't see anything out here, nothing noteworthy at least," Jade's voice came in very clear.

The opening was five feet from the floor, and it was unlikely for anybody to fall accidentally. Raphael stood tensed, waiting a few seconds in case something from the outside tried to drag out the ranger; when everything remained calm, he placed himself side by side with her.  
They both looked up and down, right and left; the torch could light up just the wall’s outer part, but nothing else was visible in the distance.

Behind them, the argument between the two mercenaries was still raging.

"How can you be so irresponsible!" Airin fists were pale, such was the strength with which she clenched them.

"We are going to rot in here if we don't try things!" Zoltan replied as angry as his companion. "There wasn't a 'safe way' to test that thing out! I don't see an alchemist here, nor a lab!"

"It wasn't up to you alone to make the decision anyway, you moron!" Airin shouted, throwing her arms towards the ceiling, an angry sound leaving her lips. Then, crossing her arms, she stared at the cavity in the wall while Zoltan moved away at a furious pace.   
The cleric and ranger were still with their heads tucked in the hole.

"They are done," Raphael whispered to Jade.

"About time, I was starting to count the bricks," Jade whispered back, giggling.

The two took their heads out of the hole and backed into the room at the same time.

"Anything dangerous? Anything useful?" Airin didn't really care; she was just trying to calm down her nerves.

"Nope," Jade answered, looking at Airin first, then at Zoltan, who was back at the double door at the entrance.

"The citadel had big, big troubles way before it fell in this underground." Raphael's voice was distant; he was still connecting a few dots while reporting his findings to his companion.

Airin tilted her head, looking at the older man. "What do you mean?"

"How do you know?" Jade spoke at the same time as the mercenary.

Raphael's head bounced between the two women. "On the outside, there are remains of fortifications similar to the ones we found so far. This building was connected to another via a walkway that wasn't part of the original design." The man raised his shoulders and looked again at both his companions before to continue. "When the citadel collapsed down here, that building and who knows how much of the city was swallowed in the abyss, but part of the restructuring survived partially hung on this wall." Raphael hesitated, but after a few seconds, he finished. "Or at least this is the only explanation I can come up with, given what I’ve seen. The citadel had been fortified before the fall happened."

The group of three stayed silent for a few seconds. Jade chewed at her lip; she was upset for not noticing or, to be more precise, for not connecting what she saw.

"This place," Airin said, "was in this area years before the Happening. The whole Barren Fields is known to have been transformed and abandoned because of the Happening. As far as we know, it could be what led to the fortification. Or be the reason why everything collapsed down here."

"A ritual happened here", Raphael added dryly. "It’s unlikely it didn't play a role. Fortifications or falling."

"As far as we know-" Jade added. "As far as everybody knows, this could have been the beginning of the Happening." She smiled cheekily, clearly joking. She didn't think for a moment that whatever happened to the Citadel was related or was the foundation of one the greatest mystery in the history of the world, but it was a fun thought.

"So," she added with a huge smile moving towards Zoltan, "let's go and make the history of Aileen. Our parents will be so proud!"

* * *

_However magical or otherworldly an outsider could consider it, Aileen's world was strictly organised in many aspects by rulers of different races and cultures, with different inclination and motivation._

_Organised were the three continents, divided into various kingdoms and realms.  
_ _Organised were the people able to use and master the Stream of magic.  
_ _Organised were the people able to connect to the Ancients.  
_ _Organised were the people in guilds and social clubs._

 _In a way or another, in time, everything ended into a classification or as a part of a faction.  
_ _The High Races came up with theories to explain everything that existed in the world.  
_ _They found a way to connect every detail, small and big, into a narrative that was, if not the Truth, good enough to explain the reality and make the world of the living thriving for thousands of years._

_Of course, there were minor differences or reinterpretation based on local beliefs, but in the end, the story was pretty much the same._

_This monumental amount of knowledge had been collated in a series of books, known in common language as "The Past and the Present - A scholarly explanation of everything visible and invisible".  
_ _It contained all the world's history and - even without dwelling into technical details - scientific, magical, and religious knowledge.  
_ _It was a flawless masterpiece except for one detail, all but negligible._

 _Five hundred years ago, something had happened; something huge, an event that had reshaped the three continents and the life in it.  
_ _But, as strange as it could sound, no one knew what exactly had happened, or even when, where, how, and why.  
_ _In the autumn of the year 4672, and the following five years, a series of chain reactions changed the world; cataclysmic earthquakes detached lands; new creatures appeared; regions became inhabitable; the stream of magic became unstable.  
_ _It had been a time of horrors and wonders when millions had died, civilisations and their history had been wiped out.  
_ _Closing that period and marking the beginning of the era called "The Restoration", a second moon, bigger than the first one, appeared in the sky and had been there since._

_When the Restoration had begun, and the survivors started to deal with the aftermath and the rebuilding of the society, accusations were thrown from one faction to another; everybody was looking for the people responsible for such devastation, and the guesses about the potential cause were wild._

_A reckless covenant of wizards who played with forces beyond their control.  
_ _A pact with an Outwardly creature that released uncontrollable power.  
_ _A circle of Clerics who displeased an Ancient one and unleashed its wrath.  
_ _All the bets were on the table, and every Ruler in Aileen realised that this uncontrolled chatter and accusations could only lead to a war on a global scale._

_In an attempt to maintain peace in such a complex time, they ordered a gathering of wise men from any guild, kingdom, and church in the world. They were given the common task to study the phenomenons and explain what happened, when, how, but mostly why._

_Those wise men soon realised that it was impossible to finish such work even if they had a whole lifetime to dedicate. Therefore, they decided to create a permanent council called "Octagon", where each generation’s bests could be involved, in the attempt to reconcile the history.  
_ _The Octagon became the first and only organisation to the date funded by all the Rulers, and it was granted special status and powers to accomplish the task._

 _The first decision the Octagon made, it was to call that period - that event - "The Happening."  
_ _And they ruled that that name would have been used in every book or document until they had discovered the Truth.  
_ _At the present day, five centuries later, they weren't remotely closer to the truth than they were when they had started._

* * *

Zoltan had climbed one of the enormous doors by the time the rest of the group approached.  
He was lost in the details of the mechanism and the artwork and didn't even hear his companions coming closer. Something didn't add up in his mind, and he kept looking at the same parts over and over again.

"Was it a potion of climbing, perhaps?" Jade asked the mercenary, smirking.

Zoltan jumped down and landed surprisingly softly. "Really? Still on that? Fifteen minutes passed already. Can we move on?" He wasn't angry or sarcastic: his focus was still on the door, and those words came out as if he were lost in thought.

"Is something wrong?" Airin asked, ignoring Zoltan remarks.

"I'm not sure." The man paused, taking his time to find the right words to explain. "It was probably because of the light, or the fact that I wasn't paying enough attention earlier, but I've noticed only now that the locking mechanism is broken. Badly broken, I mean." He took Jade's torch and put it closer to the door to illuminate it. "See? Here. The door is also bent at the top half." He moved the torch to highlight part of the wood while speaking again. "Something strong hit the door while it was locked up and opened it from the inside."

Airin got closer to the door. "A creature or a device?" 

But she didn't need to wait for an answer. Zoltan rose the torch, and huge claw marks became visible in the wood on the door’s top. The entire group froze in astonishment. How did they miss that? Was it really the absence of proper light?

"From now on", Raphael said, moving two steps away from the door as if it could come alive and attack them, "we’ll continue the exploration keeping the torches on all the time". The man looked to his right. "Sorry, Jade, I don't want to risk losing important details."

Jade wasn't happy, and her biting her lip made it very clear, but she didn’t say a word.

"But you’ll set the pace, so you will be able to look for traps. And you can go ahead as much as you like and not be in the spotlight," Raphael conceded.

"This can do," the ranger replied.

"Let's backtrack this road. The entrance to the Castle is likely on the opposite side of the Palace. We should find the gates for the Higher City", Zoltan resolved, leading the group out of the Palace with a last glance to the door.


	4. Prologue - Part IV

Raphael was walking many steps behind the others, head down looking at his boots.  
He was now used to the low light and he preferred to step back from the torch for a while to better collect his thoughts. Nobody was talking and the crackle of the flames was feebly echoing in the street.  
In the citadel, without direct light, the world on sight was narrowed to a few feet, the colours sucked out, everything looking in a depressing shade of grey. Raphael's thoughts were just as grey.

He was looking to his right, at the stonewall of the building they just came out from. Except for the access to the Palace, the rest of the building was sealed; any doorway or window encountered on the way back was bricked up and for a brief moment he entertained the reason behind the choice; but he wasn't concerned about this fact, nor about the place itself.  
Raphael didn't care about dying in the same way he didn't care about living.   
This journey was yet another where he hoped to find the meaning of his existence, and he put everything at stake with ease, as usual.  
But he was a man of good hearth, a proud disciple of Sorus and he wasn't prepared to lose other people's life; while he looked from behind at his companions, so young, he cursed himself to have agreed to go on a mission not on his own.

* * *

The more the throne room was behind the group, the more the mood of the others lifted slightly.  
There was still something heavy looming over, partly because of Zoltan and Airin’s argument, but the more they walked away, the easier it became to start talking again.  
Zoltan and Airin began to tease each other relentlessly; they were very sharp at the beginning but soon enough they turned it into friendly banters. 

“I still can’t believe you did something so stupid. I thought I saw the worst of you years ago during the journey to escort that Duke,” Airin said with a smirk.

Zoltan rolled his eyes. “That meat wasn’t so bad,” he said defensively.

“Wasn't so bad? Who spent the next two days stopping every other mile to vomit?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure, what about that time you drank the wine we were supposed to deliver?”

“Nevermind.”

After going back where they had come from, following the larger road that curved on the right, the four companions found a massive gate, which was most likely the entrance to the Higher City and was partially deformed and ruined by time and neglect. The group tried everything they could, but the gate didn’t even budge, remaining stubbornly stuck.

“Now what?” Zoltan asked, pushing his fingers through his hair in frustration.

Jade looked around, trying to figure out a possible other option. She moved quickly on one side, then the other, jumping on ruins or whatever it was useful for her to have a better view. Zoltan, Raphael and Airin just watched and waited.

After some time, Jade nodded and came back towards her companions.

“There is a walkway up there," she said pointing with her left hand, "and it apparently leads to the gate's overpass." She started moving, indicating a huge building that stretched along the road for fifty yards. "We should be able to get there through this building, but I'm quite sure that we'll need to be creative once inside."

They all moved to look for the best entrance. There were many openings and looking into a few of those, it was clear that it was split internally into different structures serving different purposes. It was probably the result of the restructuring that happened in the past, and it had made the building a complex maze.

"It was probably a combination of many royal offices: archives, libraries, post office, and so forth," Raphael explained, peeking door after door. "It is a common design for this type of citadel. It was for sure hard to navigate even before this mess, given that it’s usually designed to make it difficult for intruders to find what they come for."

Airin looked at Raphael. "You seem to know a lot. Is this part of the regular training for a Cleric? Understanding architecture and city plans, I mean." She closed another door after a quick peek.

Raphael thought for a second, then shook his head.   
"No." He didn’t care to elaborate further though and continued his previous thought. "None of these doors seems to have clear open access to the walkway. We can pick one and try of course, but it can result in a complete waste of time. There is no indication we can reach even the right floor."

All of them looked at the building again: it had three-storey, each of them around ten feet high.

Zoltan got close to the wall and touched the bricks, a smile rising on his lips. "Time to be creative"

* * *

Puffing and cursing, Jade was making her way up to the third floor. She looked down a couple of times to gauge the consequences of a possible fall, then she continued the climb aiming for the double glazed window.

Airin was waiting with Zoltan and Raphael on the street, looking at the ranger going up on the external wall with skill and good pace.

"I feel a little bit guilty", she said without moving her look from Jade. "She's doing all the hard work so far." Her voice was low and slow as if she was afraid to make Jade fall if she had talked too loud. 

"I volunteered," Zoltan replied with the same tone of voice, watching carefully the climbing. "But she insisted. Quite competitive, the young lady." His voice held a hint of appreciation. "Ten pieces of gold she won’t succeed," he added in a whisper.

"Deal," Airin replied instantly, out of force of habit. She took a look at Raphael’s face and smirked. "Come on, Father, we are only joking! Besides, she won't die from that height. Some broken bones maybe, but nothing that you can't patch up, right?" 

The old man sighed.

With a final effort and grunt, Jade reached the window. Zoltan groaned with disappointment and placed a pouch of coins in the palm of Airin's hand, which was open and waiting.

Perched in front of the window, Jade considered the situation for a few seconds; then with a hit of her elbow, she crashed the glass and made her way into the building.

The ranger looked at the room, just to be sure that nothing was lurking in the dark. She lit a torch: only dust and some broken furniture and two doors. Once the torch was secured, she searched in her backpack.

A couple of minutes later, while her companions were starting to fear for the worst, a rope came down.

Raphael decided to go first. He grabbed the rope tightly and prepared to climb, exhaling a deep breath.

"No bets," he admonished, glaring at Airin and Zoltan.

They both raised their hands up high with a gentle smile.

* * *

The way to go through the building was anything but simple; entire rooms were destroyed, partially or completely, and often the four companions had to make very wide turns in order to reach a particular point and proceed in the direction they wanted to go. Sometimes it was a matter of a wall that had collapsed on a staircase; others an entire room that had disappeared into a void so deep it was impossible to distinguish anything.

When they finally reached an opening, they found themselves on the other side of the gate, looking down the main street from the overpass.

“Yes!” Jade hissed in triumph, with a victorious wave of his arm.

“Well done, Jade, that was amazing,” Airin said, sincerely impressed, and Zoltan nodded in confirmation.

“Yes, well-,” the ranger preened, “I know what I’m doing. Now, the next move would be-.” She paused, taking in the new set of collapses and obstacles, eventually pointing towards a building partially collapsed in front of them. “There. We should be able to reach the street level going down in that trap door.”

The group moved again, still following Jade who was graciously making her way through a maze of obstacles. 

They didn't find yet direct access to the street, but from the walkaway of the defensive walls separating the two districts, they found an entrance to a building; the entrance had been created by digging into the solid stone: pickaxes and shovels were still there covered in dust and cobwebs.

The building had a spacious place, split into two levels. The upper level consisted of a balcony deep enough to cover half the room. Here and there there were still wooden shelving, very few intact and a lot more broken, pieces of wood shattered all over the place. A chandelier hovered miraculously still intact from the ceiling, half above the balustrade of the balcony and half above the main room downstairs.

“A library?” Raphael proposed, moving a piece of wood on the floor with the toe of his boot.

Jade hummed, moving around. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, eyeing something on the side. “Hey, we can go up from here.”

They reached a staircase that looked fairly stable, despite a big chunk of the ceiling had collapsed on it long ago. They got at the top and checked the upper level: it was as empty as the lower one and a closed door on the opposite side of the stairs was apparently the only way out.

Once they were sure of no immediate risk, they decided to take a break to eat something from their meagre supplies. 

For Zoltan and Airin was just routine. Without even thinking they started building an indoor campfire, Airin cracking the wood that was lying around, while Zoltan started to build some containment for the fire.

"I don't even remember the last time I felt warm," Raphael murmured, looking at the flames.  
They stayed in silence for a while, the only sounds the crackle of flames and the gurgling of the pot Zoltan was using to cook some sort of stew.

Airin was staring from the balcony at the lower level of the room, looking at nothing in particular, just lost in her thoughts; one hand touching one of the arms of the huge chandelier.

They were all tired, and now that they were catching a break, the fatigue hit like it hadn't before.  
Zoltan poured the stew on the first plate. "And with this", he smiled, "we are done with the warm meals. Starting tomorrow it will be stale bread and dried meat, so enjoy yourself"

Raphael took the plate, nodding. "Thanks, I appreciate the effort." He put the plate on his crossed legs. "Is it a long time you two travel together?"

Zoltan looked at Airin still at the balcony. "A while. Couple of years," he answered, passing another plate to Jade, "but I suppose that on this job can count as a lifetime".  
He poured the last two plates. "Airin, dinner-or-lunch is ready."

The mercenary moved away from the balcony still lost in thoughts.

"Indeed a long time", Raphael acknowledged. "Did you operate only in Leddarhia?"

Zoltan nodded tasting the stew "It is a big kingdom, no need to move further. But someday with more money who knows. What about you?"

"I spent most of my time living on the mountains on my own, nothing really exciting. The stew is good by the way." Raphael sipped. "Thanks again."

Zoltan raised his hand, welcoming Raphael's comment. "I can't imagine my life in segregation. Ranicord perhaps? Or the granite mountains?"

Raphael shook his head. "The Five Peaks."

Jade and Airin raised their heads, jolted back to the present by Raphael's words. They both looked at him.

"It is a dwarven territory," Zoltan commented with a hint of surprise in his voice.

"Yes. Yes, it is," Raphael confirmed. "Is that a problem?"

"No, but it is unusual, that's all." Zoltan put the now empty dish on the floor.

"Perhaps," Raphael replied, "but Betreburg is an open kingdom, everybody is welcome there."

Truth to be told, the dwarven kingdom was indeed open to everybody, but many would argue how much welcoming it was.  
Dwarves were fair but stuck in their ways. It was very difficult for people not of their kind to be as diligent as the laws required for a long stay. Most of the visitors didn't overstay their welcome and once the business they came for was done, they were extremely happy to be on their way home.

Zoltan simply nodded "No doubt, no doubt." Then he looked at Jade. "What about you, young lady? Anything exciting about your life?"

"Yeah! Once I fell into an underground where a big city was lying. I know that sounds crazy, but still-," she smiled and started cleaning the dishes.

"Come on," Zoltan pressed, "we are going to spend who knows how much time together, it won't hurt some friendly intimacy."

"Fine." She sighed, "but for the record, people that go for my kind of job are not renowned for their social skills."   
She thought a few seconds.   
"I'm from Morgaria, I'm twenty and I've wanted to be a scout since I was twelve."

Airin took the cleaned dishes from Jade to stack them back in the backpack. "It is a long way from Morgaria, you began to travel on your own very young," the first said slowly.

Jade drank some water, nodding to Airin's comment. "It wasn't planned," she drank another sip. "To come so far from home, I mean. One thing led to another and here I am."

"Your parents must be worried sick," Airin spoke without thinking and she regretted it the instant that sentence left her lips. "None of my business of course."

Jade didn't hold a laugh while looking at Airin's face. "Don't worry, that's fine. Nothing dramatic anyway. Family business didn't agree with me and I decided to move on. They weren't happy obviously, but in time they will come to terms with my choice, I'm sure." She stretched her legs. "I hope. Anyway, no damsel in distress here, so don't bother."

Airin smiled back, but still, something in Jade's eye made her think. She didn't think that the ranger was lying but somehow she was simplifying the whole story. But after all, it wasn't her business and she decided to not press on with questions.

Zoltan hummed, appreciating Jade's openness. The talk seemed to help him find the overall situation less depressing. "I come from a similar background, I'd say. My family owns a business. Blacksmith shop. When I became an adult, I signed for the military. It was supposed to be for a couple of years, but I never went back. What's your family business?"

Jade thought again a few seconds. "They own a tavern. A big one."

Zoltan put on a big smile, standing up once finished backpacking and turning around to give another look at their surroundings. “Oh man, a tavern! It is a long time dream of mine to-”

Airin blinked and looked up towards Zoltan after his voice abruptly stopped. She took in the other mercenary’s shocked stare and raised quickly, turning to watch in the same direction.   
Airin frowned.   
“Zoltan?” She called, unsure.

Zoltan was incredibly pale and pointed towards the balustrade of the balcony. “There,” he said, nearly whispering.

Airin looked again, and this time Raphael and Jade caught up that something wasn’t quite right and raised. The frown on the woman’s forehead increased.

“The chandelier? What about it?”

Zoltan turned his head to look at his companion in disbelief. “You- You don’t see it?”

“See what?” Jade interjected, looking partly fascinated and partly worried.

Zoltan turned again towards the empty space above the balustrade in front of him and said in a low voice.  
“There is a figure hanging from the chandelier. A big rope around his neck. Like- It looks like an execution."

The man looked at his companions, but by the look on their face, it was clear that they couldn't see a damn thing. 

"He has his back turned on us. He is dressed like a member of the convoy we were travelling with.”

Silence followed those words, leaving them sinking inside each member of the group.

Raphael was the first to react.  
“Do you think it has to do with that liquid you drank? But then, are you seeing things that don’t exist or are you seeing things who are supposed to be invisible for everyone?” The old man said, clearly reasoning out loud.

Zoltan shook his head.  
“No idea,” he only said, before glancing towards Airin. “I’m going to rotate the chandelier so I can see his face.”

Airin seemed ready to bark some nasty remark. Instead, she paused, thinking. It seemed like she came to the conclusion there was very little choice, because her lips tightened in a thin, hard line, before she simply nodded, one hand going to the hilt of her sword, reaching over her shoulder. Raphael and Jade tensed as well.

The chandelier rotated producing a high pitched grating sound and dust came down from the ceiling. The rope where the body was hanged twisted with the chandelier rotation and when the body came into Zoltan reach, its back was still turned on the group.

“I’m going to touch his shoulder,” Zoltan began to describe his every move and what he saw. “Just a light pull, enough for him to turn."

Zoltan stayed silent for a while before he gasped   
"His face… oh, for the love of the Ancients. Someone etched a smile into the skin on the sides of his mouth. And he has a sign hanging on his neck, it says...”  
Zoltan paused, frowning.  
“It says...'Don’t turn around'.”

It was a typical reaction, really. Out of pure instinct.

As soon as the words left Zoltan’s lips, all four of them turned around in alarm.

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued...  
> I publish roughly every other week.


End file.
